1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a locking mechanism, and more particularly to a locking mechanism having a safety lock function and an optical disk drive having the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
An optical disk drive for a computer is usually operated by pressing a button to activate an ejection mechanism for ejecting out a tray. However, this kind of structure easily results in ejection of the tray due to accidental touching of the button by a user or through the presence of an external force, so that, during reading of optical disk data by the optical disk drive, the optical disk drive suddenly stops reading or become damaged when the tray is bumped.
To overcome the aforesaid drawback, Taiwanese Patent Publication No. 200935407 discloses an ejection mechanism that prevents an accidental press and a disc driver using the same. Because a slide key structure is biased by a first biasing element, a trigger body of the slide key structure cannot be aligned with a tray-ejecting button, thereby placing the ejection mechanism in a lock position. Even if the user accidentally touches the slide key structure, the tray will not pop out. To unlock the ejection mechanism, the trigger body of the slide key structure is moved to align with the tray-ejecting button, after which the trigger body is pressed to contact the tray-ejecting button for ejecting the tray out of a housing.
However, the ejection mechanism of the aforesaid patent has numerous components, and the structure thereof is complicated. Hence, it consumes more assembly time, and has high production costs. Therefore, the area of improvement that the present invention focuses on is that related to realizing a simple structure for a locking mechanism.